4 Ways Small Business Websites Can Drive More Sales

Mashable had a great post for small businesses which I summarize below. To read the full post, click on 4 Ways Small Business Websites Can Drive More Sales

Aaron Sperling is CEO and co-founder of vFlyer, which provides online marketing solutions for small businesses and independent service providers. You can follow Aaron and his team on their Facebook page, Twitter and on the company blog.

A scenario: You envision a phenomenal idea, put all of the necessary pieces into place, and now run your own successful business. You’ve got a functioning website, but you’re struggling with 60% bounce rates, and users don’t seem to be completing the necessary conversion processes.

You don’t have the resources to invest in a web designer or consultant, so how do you go about optimizing your website on your own? Try the following tips.

1. Keep Content Fresh

Give current and potential customers a reason to revisit your website. Think about the websites you visit regularly and what attracts you to them.

(author’s note: Keep publishing fresh content based on buyer questions)

2. Integrate With Social Media

Engaging users and providing relevant information via social media channels is an important factor in driving traffic to your website. The more your content is shared via social media, the better your website will rank in search engines, and the more referrals you will receive.

(author’s note) Share great content on social media and ask others to share it.)

3. Make Ecommerce Easy

The massive amount of information on the Internet has shortened our attention spans and made it easier than ever to ”shop around” for lower cost competitors. Because of this, you need to make it as easy as possible for visitors to purchase what they want, when they want.

It is extremely important to evaluate all possible “purchase scenarios,” meaning the different routes a visitor could take in order to complete a purchase. For example, a visitor coming in through a paid search advertisement may land on a different page than a visitor who was referred from a Facebook link. Making it as easy as possible for these visitors to start and complete the purchase process will have a positive effect on your conversion rate.

Popular ecommerce companies like PayPal and Google Checkout provide free JavaScript and HTML widgets that you can add to your website. After evaluating all of the purchase scenarios, determine where to add these widgets to make it easy and timely for visitors to complete a purchase.

4. Use SEO to its Full Potential

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a huge topic, far too vast and complex to address succinctly. That said, I can recommend three relatively straightforward steps that will likely increase your website’s search engine rankings, and thus make it easier for people to find your business.

• Identify your keywords. Start by building a list of the keywords that you think potential customers will use in searches to find your business. Once you have your list, use a keyword tool like Google AdWords to determine the frequency that those keywords are used and to find other related keywords. With this information, you’ll be able to quickly identify the most important keywords for your business.
• Use your keywords in your website. For each page on your website, figure out which keywords you want to target, then use those keywords in both the page content and the meta-data (the title, description and keywords of the page, which search engines use to determine what the page is about). Then, create links on other pages of your site to this targeted page, using the selected key words in the link title.
• External link building. When other websites link to your site, it indicates to search engines that the content on your site has value, and that boosts your SEO. For that reason, external link building is perhaps the most important aspect of SEO – but it can also be the most difficult, because you have limited control. It’s best to focus on the things that are in your control, such as your Facebook and Google+ pages, Twitterfeed, blog, and Yellow Pages listings. Be sure to link to your website from all of these channels.

Tackling these four activities might not be quick or easy, but once you begin updating your content more frequently, making ecommerce simple and easy for visitors and utilizing social media and SEO to their full potentials, you’ll be well on your way to improved lead generation and more visitor conversions.

When optimizing your own websites, what have you found to be the most important area of focus? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, IdeaMomentLight, Flickr, Ernst Vikne